From Horse Theft to Horse-Facilitated Healing: Carolina Lockwood's 30-Year Evolution in Patagonia | Carolina Lockwood of Alquimia Equina, Bariloche, Argentina | EAW 53

✨ "It's not that I gave up. I switched." – Carolina Lockwood

Carolina Lockwood joins Rupert Isaacson from Bariloche, in the Patagonia region of Argentina, where she has spent more than 30 years building equine-assisted work from the ground up — first blending art therapy with horses, then training directly with Rupert in Texas, then running an intensive Horse Boy–style program, then coaching, and now facilitating horse-based energy healing.

What makes Carolina's story distinctive is the environment she's built it in. In the areas around Bariloche, horse theft for meat is a real and recurring danger — over the years Carolina has lost five horses to thieves, including cases where stolen horses were found slaughtered. She talks candidly about tracking horses down with the police, the informal social protections that eventually stabilized her herd's safety, and the anxiety that never fully goes away even after 30 years without an incident.

The conversation traces her full arc: building a team of six staff and 30 kids a week at the height of her program, learning to read burnout in both horses and herself, closing that chapter deliberately rather than abandoning the work altogether, and evolving into equine coaching (trained through Kathy Pike and the Linda Kohanov lineage), liberty work (with Jean-François Pignon and Celeste Solzenne), and now a year-plus training in horse-facilitated energy healing with Saskia Marroquin of Caballo Cósmico. Along the way, Rupert and Carolina dig into what "energy work" actually means in practical terms, and why practitioners shouldn't feel locked into one rigid model for life.

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🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode

How Carolina moved from art therapy and ceramics work with special-needs kids into equine-assisted work in Bariloche, PatagoniaWhy she traveled to Texas to train directly with Rupert after discovering the Horse Boy filmWhat it's actually like running horses in a region where theft and slaughter for meat is a recurring, organized threat — and how she and her family tracked down stolen horses with the policeWhy gauchos' and polo horses are rarely stolen while therapy and pleasure horses are the ones targetedHow Carolina rebuilt her herd's security by relocating and relying on informal community protection rather than fences or gunsWhat her own "non-structure structure" for horse welfare looks like, built around free roaming, herd life, and trust — and how it differs from the fitness-and-conditioning approach used in Horse Boy MethodHow she learned to read burnout in a horse, including a beloved therapy horse who started biting handlers when he was "done"Why she eventually closed her intensive riding-based program on purpose, and how she thinks about that decision nowHow she transitioned into equine coaching, training with Kathy Pike and the lineage of Linda Kohanov in ColoradoWhat liberty work with Jean-François Pignon and his student Celeste Solzenne taught her about horses reflecting a person's inner stateHow she began training in horse-facilitated energy healing with Saskia Marroquin of Caballo Cósmico, and what that work looks like in practiceThe story of a terminally ill client whose final wish involved Carolina's horses, and what it revealed to her about this kind of healingWhat Carolina's dream is for a future retreat and rescue sanctuary in Patagonia, and why she's decided to say it out loud

🎤 Memorable Moments from the Episode

[00:02:02] Carolina's path from art therapy and ceramics to horses, and the natural horsemanship training with Paul Walker that changed her perspective

[00:06:27] Discovering the Horse Boy film, writing to Rupert, and going to Texas to train

[00:11:56] The reality of horse theft and slaughter for meat in the mountains around Bariloche

[00:15:22] Tracking down stolen horses with the police, and the ones she never got back